Henry Hill Hickman, M.R.C.S. : an English pioneer of anaesthesia / [C.J.S. Thompson].

Thompson, C. J. S. (Charles John Samuel), 1862-1943.

Date:: [1912]

Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Henry Hill Hickman, M.R.C.S. : an English pioneer of anaesthesia / [C.J.S. Thompson]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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HENRY HILL HICKMAN, M.R.C.S., AN ENGLISH PIONEER OF ANESTHESIA. BY C. J. S. THOMPSON, Curator of the Wellcome Historical Medical Museum. IN the year 1820 a young surgeon named Henry Hill Hickman commenced practice in the little town of Ludlow in Shropshire. He had barely reached his majority—being born on January 27th, 1800—when he became a Member of the Royal College of Surgeons, and began his career as a country practitioner. Impressed by the agonising sufferings of those on whom he was called to operate, he resolved to seek some method of alleviating their pain by rendering them unconscious before the operation. With this object he commenced a series of experiments on animals, first, by producing semi-asphyxiation bv the exclusion of atmospheric air; then by causing them